Name: Ham and Chicken Pie
Ingredients: leftover roasted or boiled chicken; leftover ham; pastry for lining the dish; hard-boiled eggs; gravy; flour

Why it works: Chicken and ham are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 14% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 1,497 recipes. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

Ham and Chicken Pie

Ingredients

Directions

The book gives no oven temperature. The 400°F (200°C) in the steps was added when the recipe was transcribed, as a starting point.

Prepare

Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C).
Line a baking dish with pastry.

Assemble

Layer chopped ham, then chopped or sliced chicken (remove bones), followed by another layer of ham, and finally another layer of chicken.
Add a layer of sliced or chopped hard-boiled eggs.
Pour rich gravy over the layers, covering the meat well.
Sprinkle with flour.
Cover with top crust.

Bake

Bake for 40 minutes.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Chicken + hamtop 14% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together1,497 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).
Egg + flourtop 15% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together106,462 recipes

Shared aroma: isobutyraldehyde (malty, green).
Ham + eggtop 17% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together4,526 recipes

Shared aroma: 2,4-decadienal (seaweed).
Chicken + flourtop 27% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together10,559 recipes

Shared aroma: acetaldehyde (pungent, ethereal).
Chicken + eggtop 30% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together8,991 recipes

Shared aroma: (e,e)-2,4-decadienal (fatty, deep fried).

Egg and flour barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 106,462 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Leftover chicken: Provides the main meat and bulk of the filling.
Leftover ham: Adds salty, savoury flavour to the filling layers.
Hard-boiled eggs: Add richness and body to the filling between the meat layers.
Gravy: Moistens the layers so the filling stays juicy as it bakes.
Flour: Sprinkled over the filling to help thicken the gravy as it cooks.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.